Object detection in satellite-borne Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imagery holds immense potential in tasks such as urban monitoring and disaster response. However, the inherent complexities of SAR data and the scarcity of annotations present significant challenges in the advancement of object detection in this domain. Notably, the detection of small objects in satellite-borne SAR images poses a particularly intricate problem, because of the technology's relatively low spatial resolution and inherent noise. Furthermore, the lack of large labelled SAR datasets hinders the development of supervised deep learning-based object detection models. In this paper, we introduce TRANSAR, a novel self-supervised end-to-end vision transformer-based SAR object detection model that incorporates masked image pre-training on an unlabeled SAR image dataset that spans more than $25,700$ km\textsuperscript{2} ground area. Unlike traditional object detection formulation, our approach capitalises on auxiliary binary semantic segmentation, designed to segregate objects of interest during the post-tuning, especially the smaller ones, from the background. In addition, to address the innate class imbalance due to the disproportion of the object to the image size, we introduce an adaptive sampling scheduler that dynamically adjusts the target class distribution during training based on curriculum learning and model feedback. This approach allows us to outperform conventional supervised architecture such as DeepLabv3 or UNet, and state-of-the-art self-supervised learning-based arhitectures such as DPT, SegFormer or UperNet, as shown by extensive evaluations on benchmark SAR datasets.

From 2000 to 2015, the UN's Millennium Development Goals guided global priorities. The subsequent Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted a more dynamic approach, with annual indicator updates. As 2030 nears and progress lags, innovative acceleration strategies are critical. This study develops an AI-powered knowledge graph system to analyze SDG interconnections, discover potential new goals, and visualize them online. Using official SDG texts, Elsevier's keyword dataset, and 1,127 TED Talk transcripts (2020.01-2024.04), a pilot on 269 talks from 2023 applies AI-speculative design, large language models, and retrieval-augmented generation. Key findings include: (1) Heatmap analysis reveals strong associations between Goal 10 and Goal 16, and minimal coverage of Goal 6. (2) In the knowledge graph, simulated dialogue over time reveals new central nodes, showing how richer data supports divergent thinking and goal clarity. (3) Six potential new goals are proposed, centered on equity, resilience, and technology-driven inclusion. This speculative-AI framework offers fresh insights for policymakers and lays groundwork for future multimodal and cross-system SDG applications.

We introduce KFinEval-Pilot, a benchmark suite specifically designed to evaluate large language models (LLMs) in the Korean financial domain. Addressing the limitations of existing English-centric benchmarks, KFinEval-Pilot comprises over 1,000 curated questions across three critical areas: financial knowledge, legal reasoning, and financial toxicity. The benchmark is constructed through a semi-automated pipeline that combines GPT-4-generated prompts with expert validation to ensure domain relevance and factual accuracy. We evaluate a range of representative LLMs and observe notable performance differences across models, with trade-offs between task accuracy and output safety across different model families. These results highlight persistent challenges in applying LLMs to high-stakes financial applications, particularly in reasoning and safety. Grounded in real-world financial use cases and aligned with the Korean regulatory and linguistic context, KFinEval-Pilot serves as an early diagnostic tool for developing safer and more reliable financial AI systems.

Flow-based methods for sampling and generative modeling use continuous-time dynamical systems to represent a {transport map} that pushes forward a source measure to a target measure. The introduction of a time axis provides considerable design freedom, and a central question is how to exploit this freedom. Though many popular methods seek straight line (i.e., zero acceleration) trajectories, we show here that a specific class of ``curved'' trajectories can significantly improve approximation and learning. In particular, we consider the unit-time interpolation of any given transport map $T$ and seek the schedule $\tau: [0,1] \to [0,1]$ that minimizes the spatial Lipschitz constant of the corresponding velocity field over all times $t \in [0,1]$. This quantity is crucial as it allows for control of the approximation error when the velocity field is learned from data. We show that, for a broad class of source/target measures and transport maps $T$, the \emph{optimal schedule} can be computed in closed form, and that the resulting optimal Lipschitz constant is \emph{exponentially smaller} than that induced by an identity schedule (corresponding to, for instance, the Wasserstein geodesic). Our proof technique relies on the calculus of variations and $\Gamma$-convergence, allowing us to approximate the aforementioned degenerate objective by a family of smooth, tractable problems.

The release of ChatGPT in late 2022 caused a flurry of activity and concern in the academic and educational communities. Some see the tool's ability to generate human-like text that passes at least cursory inspections for factual accuracy ``often enough'' a golden age of information retrieval and computer-assisted learning. Some, on the other hand, worry the tool may lead to unprecedented levels of academic dishonesty and cheating. In this work, we quantify some of the effects of the emergence of Large Language Models (LLMs) on online education by analyzing a multi-year dataset of student essay responses from a free university-level MOOC on AI ethics. Our dataset includes essays submitted both before and after ChatGPT's release. We find that the launch of ChatGPT coincided with significant changes in both the length and style of student essays, mirroring observations in other contexts such as academic publishing. We also observe -- as expected based on related public discourse -- changes in prevalence of key content words related to AI and LLMs, but not necessarily the general themes or topics discussed in the student essays as identified through (dynamic) topic modeling.

We investigate the challenge of establishing stochastic-like guarantees when sequentially learning from a stream of i.i.d. data that includes an unknown quantity of clean-label adversarial samples. We permit the learner to abstain from making predictions when uncertain. The regret of the learner is measured in terms of misclassification and abstention error, where we allow the learner to abstain for free on adversarial injected samples. This approach is based on the work of Goel, Hanneke, Moran, and Shetty from arXiv:2306.13119. We explore the methods they present and manage to correct inaccuracies in their argumentation. However, this approach is limited to the realizable setting, where labels are assigned according to some function $f^*$ from the hypothesis space $\mathcal{F}$. Based on similar arguments, we explore methods to make adaptations for the agnostic setting where labels are random. Introducing the notion of a clean-label adversary in the agnostic context, we are the first to give a theoretical analysis of a disagreement-based learner for thresholds, subject to a clean-label adversary with noise.

Archetypal analysis (AA) was originally proposed in 1994 by Adele Cutler and Leo Breiman as a computational procedure to extract the distinct aspects called archetypes in observations with each observational record approximated as a mixture (i.e., convex combination) of these archetypes. AA thereby provides straightforward, interpretable, and explainable representations for feature extraction and dimensionality reduction, facilitating the understanding of the structure of high-dimensional data with wide applications throughout the sciences. However, AA also faces challenges, particularly as the associated optimization problem is non-convex. This survey provides researchers and data mining practitioners an overview of methodologies and opportunities that AA has to offer surveying the many applications of AA across disparate fields of science, as well as best practices for modeling data using AA and limitations. The survey concludes by explaining important future research directions concerning AA.

Bayesian inference provides a principled framework for quantifying uncertainty in both parameters and models by computing full posterior distributions and model evidence (Gelman et al., 2013). However, Bayesian inference is often analytically intractable, requiring the use of approximate methods like Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC; Brooks, 2011) or variational inference (VI; Blei et al., 2017). These methods typically necessitate repeated evaluations of the target density, and many require differentiability of the model (Neal, 2011; Kucukelbir et al., 2017). When model evaluations are computationally expensive - for instance, involving extensive numerical methods - these requirements make standard Bayesian approaches impractical. Due to these computational demands, practitioners often resort to simpler alternatives such as maximum a posteriori (MAP) estimation or maximum likelihood estimation (MLE); 1 see for example Wilson and Collins (2019); Ma et al. (2023). While these point estimates can provide useful insights, they fail to capture parameter uncertainty, potentially leading to overconfident or biased conclusions (Gelman et al., 2013). This limitation highlights the need for efficient posterior approximation methods that avoid the computational costs of standard inference techniques.1.

Extracting key concepts and their relationships from course information and materials facilitates the provision of visualizations and recommendations for learners who need to select the right courses to take from a large number of courses. However, identifying and extracting themes manually is labor-intensive and time-consuming. Previous machine learning-based methods to extract relevant concepts from courses heavily rely on detailed course materials, which necessitates labor-intensive preparation of course materials. This paper investigates the potential of LLMs such as GPT in automatically generating course concepts and their relations. Specifically, we design a suite of prompts and provide GPT with the course information with different levels of detail, thereby generating high-quality course concepts and identifying their relations. Furthermore, we comprehensively evaluate the quality of the generated concepts and relationships through extensive experiments. Our results demonstrate the viability of LLMs as a tool for supporting educational content selection and delivery.

Leveraging this'adaptive' potential of medical ML could generate significant benefits for patient health and well-being. Recent engagements with the ethical issues generated by the use of adaptive ML systems in medicine have typically been limited to discussions of'the update problem': how should systems that continue to change and evolve post-regulatory approval be regulated? In this paper, we draw attention to an important set of ethical issues raised by the use of adaptive machine learning systems in medicine that have, thus far, been neglected and are highly deserving of further attention. Discussions of adaptive machine learning systems to date have overlooked the distinction between two sorts of variance that such systems may exhibit -- diachronic evolution (change over time) and synchronic variation (difference between cotempo-raneous instantiations of the algorithmic system at different sites) -- and underestimated the significance of the latter. Both diachronic evolution and synchronic variation will complicate the hermeneutic task of clinicians in interpreting the outputs of AI systems, and will therefore pose significant challenges to the process of securing informed consent to treatment. Equity issues may occur where synchronic variation is permitted, as the quality of care may vary significantly across patients or between hospitals. However, the decision as to whether to allow or eliminate synchronic variation involves complex trade-offs between accuracy and generalisability, as well as a number of other values, including justice and non-maleficence. In some contexts, preventing synchronic variation from emerging may only be possible at the expense of the wellbeing, and the quality of care available to, particular patients or classes of patients. Designers and regulators of adaptive ML systems will need to confront these issues if the potential benefits of adaptive ML in medical care are to be realised.